Armageddon Now
by Cyclone
Summary: The Scooby Gang must endure an apocalypse they cannot stop. On hold.
1. Prologue

Title: Armageddon Now (0/?)  
  
Author: Cyclone  
  
Feedback: Please be gentle.  
  
Distribution: Gimme credit and a link. Plus, archived at http://fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=62966 or http://fanfiction.net/~cyclone  
  
Rating: I'm gonna go say PG.  
  
Spoilers: Up to Chosen for BtVS. Anything goes for the other.  
  
Disclaimer: Some of the characters depicted herein belong to Joss. The jury's still out on others. I'm just borrowing them for a while.  
  
Summary: The Scooby Gang must endure an apocalypse they cannot stop.  
  
Author's Note: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I have enough WIPs as it is. I'll explain in the postscript.  
  
* * *  
  
Xander waited at the airport solemnly, checking his watch. The gang's flight should be arriving in a few more minutes.  
  
One more day until the big celebration on the island.  
  
One more day until the final sequence of events that would lead to the end of the world began.  
  
And only he knew it was coming.  
  
It was a weight he'd carried a long time. He first learned it ten years ago, on his road trip after graduation. Or was it thirty years from now? He hated time travel.  
  
Shaking that off, he glanced out the windows to the massive object that was at the root of it all. A part of him wanted to hate it. If it had never come, then the forces that would destroy the Earth might overlook the insignificant planet he'd sacrificed so much to save.  
  
But no.  
  
It would be his home soon, and the home of his friends.  
  
"Xander!"  
  
He turned and put on a false smile, running up to them and pulling them into a massive group hug.  
  
"Hey, girls. Where's Giles?"  
  
"Right behind us," Willow said with a smile, shaking her head in rueful amusement. "There was a problem with his luggage."  
  
Xander nodded, "Ah." He looked between them: Willow, Buffy, and Dawn.  
  
"Well, welcome to Macross City, girls."  
  
* * *  
  
Author's Postscript:  
  
Okay, folks, here's what happened.  
  
I was watching my old Robotech tapes, marathoning for a few hours every couple of weeks. In fact, I even posted some ramblings on the Second War at Whirlwind Productions. When this idea popped into my head last week, I shelved it... until today.  
  
Y'see, today, I watched a few episodes from my Robotech tapes, turned off the VCR, and what did I see? Macross II on the Action Channel. 


	2. Chapter One

Title: Armageddon Now (1?) 

Author: Cyclone

Feedback: Please be gentle.

Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.

Rating: Mechanized violence and harsh language.

Spoilers: Up to Chosen for BtVS. Anything goes for the other.

Disclaimer: Some of the characters depicted herein belong to Joss. The jury's still out on others. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

Summary: The Scooby Gang must endure an apocalypse they cannot stop.

Author's Note: This is what I get for borrowing a friend's Robotech comic collection. This will require at least some basic knowledge of Robotech, since I'm jumping ahead to avoid rehashing what amounts to a bunch of events happening around this 'fic's main characters.

* * *

Xander tried to ignore the occasional tremor beneath his destroid's feet as he maneuvered the foot-thick patch over the tear in the wall and began welding it in place.

He wasn't a soldier, after all. He was just a construction worker, and the stripped-down Spartan he was piloting wouldn't make much difference in the battle raging just on the other side of the relatively thin sheet of steel. The SDF-1's auto-repair systems could only handle so much, after all.

Suddenly, the patch he'd just made exploded toward him, and when his vision cleared, he saw the top half of a Valkyrie in battloid mode lying in front of him, its chestplate shattered. As he brought the destroid to its feet, his radio crackled to life.

/Worker-Seven, do you copy/

It was the fabled Lt. Cmdr. Hayes.

Joy.

"Worker-Seven here," he replied. That was his destroid's designation, abbreviated to WK-007 on all the paperwork, much to his own private annoyance.

/Worker-Seven, our internal sensors have been knocked out in your sector. What's going on over there/

He looked around, "I patched the hull breach, but it just got blown open again."

/We're reading incoming battlepods. We need you to intercept them./

"You want me to WHAT?" he sputtered. "This tin can's not even armed!"

/You only need to hold them off for a few minutes. Green Squadron's breaking off to assist. Control out./

Xander scowled. That was a woman who really knew how to aggravate someone. They could have at least given him something to shoot the Zentraedi with.

He looked around and found something promising. It was a gun pod, likely belonging to the luckless Valkyrie he'd found himself staring at only moments earlier.

Picking it up, he hunkered down behind the lower remains of the wall, glad that the civilians had been evacuated to the shelters. With a silent prayer, he lined up the 55mm tri-cannon and depressed the trigger.

He was rewarded with a brilliant fireball, and he quickly tracked to the next target. It sideslipped at the last second, however, and he barely clipped it, taking off a leg as it continued to rocket towards him.

Xander kept firing, but the nimble battlepod somehow managed to avoid the next burst, just as the spray of shells stopped.

Out of ammo. Crap.

He felt a kind of detachment as the battlepod barreled into him, sending him and his destroid flying back against what, until that second, was an office high rise.

Reflexively, he grabbed the battlepod and groped for the welder hooked to the destroid's hip. Xander brought it up to the battlepod's sensor eye and activated it, melting through delicate electronics and armor with equal ease.

When it stopped moving, he threw it back in relief.

And stared as the hatch popped open.

_You have GOT to be kidding me!_ he thought. With growing horror, he watched as the badly burned Zentraedi warrior rose and leaped at him. Without the mass of the battlepod, however, the Zentraedi's weight was much more easily managed, and Xander's destroid stayed on its feet.

Xander ground his teeth as massive fists hammered his destroid, denting armor and shaking him in the cockpit like a set of maracas. He measured the distance and returned the favor. The Zentraedi folded over the punch to the gut and went flying back out of the ship.

The one-eyed carpenter struggled to catch his breath.

_God, I hope Green Squad gets here soon._

As if in answer to his silent plea, he saw a Valkyrie flash by outside, apparently in pursuit of an enemy.

* * *

Xander hopped off the ladder, glad beyond words to be out of that cockpit. He was soaked with sweat, and he was still trembling. He doubted his nerves would recover for at least another hour. Fighting demons was one thing, but he'd never had to fight in a giant robot before.

Frankly, he had been more afraid of hitting the wrong button and self-destructing or ejecting than he was of the Zentraedi.

"What did you do to my destroid!" roared the burly mechanic.

Xander shot the mechanic a tired look, "Don't look at me. The brass, in its infinite wisdom, decided I should try to hold off the aliens in sector three. Without weapons."

The mechanic looked up at the battered destroid again, "What'd you do? Wrestle with them?"

"Basically, yeah," Xander nodded.

The man looked at him with newfound respect for a long moment, then finally growled, "Well, don't do it again. I don't have enough time as it is. I don't need to be wasting time patching up your machine too."

"Gotcha."

* * *

"Hey, Xander," Dawn waved as he returned to his apartment. Of all of them, she had adjusted to the new... circumstances... better than any of the others.

It took them about two weeks to convince Willow to NOT try to magically translocate everyone and the ship back to Earth.

Buffy and Giles were both torn, trying to deal with the idea that there was something out there that a Slayer couldn't fight. The sudden feeling of helplessness was ten times worse than when they faced Glory or the First.

"Hey, Dawn," he nodded. "What's up?"

"I signed up."

He blinked.

Signed up? What did she mean by "signed u-"...?

"You what!"

"I'm joining the defense forces," Dawn replied. "Training starts tomorrow. I've had enough of sitting around while everyone else fights."

Xander nodded, "Oh. Technician?" She did, after all, pick up an engineering degree...

"Veritech pilot."

He blinked, "Does Buffy know?"

"Not yet. I'm going to tell her tonight."

Xander nodded again, "Well, uh, I need to get changed, then I'm heading out to check the construction site."

"Plus, you don't wanna be here when I tell her, right?"

"Possibly."

* * *

"Keep going, keep going," Xander waved the truck onward. "Whoa, hold it! Yeah, we got it."

He turned and headed for the edge of the construction site. A large chunk of shrapnel had neatly embedded itself in the steel framework, and it took a combination of careful maneuvering and an array of pulley cables to get it out without doing further damage.

"Mister Harris?"

He looked up, "It's Xander, not 'Mister Harris,' Mi-" He blinked in surprise. "...uh, Commander? What are you doing here?"

What on Earth -- well, on the SDF-1, anyway -- would bring the workaholic Lt. Cmdr. Hayes to a construction site where she had no business being?

The bridge officer had a somber, regretful look on her face. She looked up, "I just... came to apologize, Mi-... Xander. I shouldn't have sent you into combat like that."

He shook his head, "Don't worry about it, Commander. You did what you had to do. Besides, I've been thinking about signing up for combat duty anyway."

_True, I'd only been thinking about it since Dawn told me she did a half hour ago... but there's no need to tell her that,_ Xander added silently.

"But, I... your destroid wasn't armed, and I..."

"...had to get someone there," Xander interrupted. "Look, Commander, if you hadn't, I'd be dead. That destroid's not fast enough to get clear before they would've swarmed it, and you'd've had an even bigger problem on your hands."

She looked at him for a long moment, "Thank you."

* * *

"Xander, did you know about this!" Buffy demanded, searching his face for answers.

Xander blinked. Or winked. It was hard to tell sometimes.

"Ah, only maybe an hour before you did," he said.

She fumed.

After a moment, he asked, "Ah, we are talking about Dawn's new career choice, right?"

"Yes."

"I'm a grown woman now, Buffy," Dawn groused. "I can make my own decisions."

"She's quite right," Giles interjected.

"Giles?" she whirled in shock, betrayal written across her face.

"You can't protect her forever, Buffy. And certainly not from this. This... this is beyond anything any of us has ever faced before."

_Don't be so sure about that, G-man,_ Xander thought silently. "Yeah, well, don't worry too much about it, Buff. I'll be out there."

"Xander," Dawn scowled. "You didn't. I don't need a babysitter."

"Hey!" Xander protested. "After nearly nearly getting my ass shot off today, I thought it might be a good idea to be in one that had guns for once! Lots of guns. I start training on the Tomahawk in a week."

"Why not veritechs?" Willow asked.

Xander rolled his eye and pointed at the socket, "You really think they'll let a one-eyed man fly a jet, Will?"

"Oh. Um. Right."

* * *

"Oookay, maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Xander muttered as he mentally ran over the destroid's controls. He hadn't thought the Tomahawk would be so... clumsy.

_Good grief, this thing makes the Beta look graceful!_

He looked out at the featureless darkness of space and resisted the urge to run his scanners. The Captain had planned some sort of ambush or something, and stealth was of paramount importance.

But Xander had this nagging feeling he was forgetting something, something important about this op...

And with Dawn out there, somewhere, flying with the Skulls...

"C'mon... c'mon..."

* * *

Author's Postscript:

Another part of another 'fic.


	3. Chapter Two

Title: Armageddon Now (2) 

Author: Cyclone

Feedback: Please be gentle.

Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.

Rating: Mechanized violence and harsh language.

Spoilers: Up to Chosen for BtVS. Anything goes for the other.

Disclaimer: Some of the characters depicted herein belong to Joss. The jury's still out on others. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

Summary: The Scooby Gang must endure an apocalypse they cannot stop.

Author's Note: Had an image pop into my head that wouldn't go away, and it revived this particular plot bunny.

* * *

"Stupid... lumbering... piece of shit tin can, MOVE!" Xander snarled as he heaved on the controls, trying to get his Tomahawk out of the way of twin particle beams, which creased the side of his destroid's right arm. With a moment's struggle, he brought that very arm around and fired a thirty-megajoule particle beam in response, holing the battlepod with ridiculous ease. 

The Tomahawk may be slow and an older-model destroid, but it certainly wasn't lacking in firepower. Except, perhaps, in comparison to the Monster.

/Goliath Squadron, fall back for rearming and report to the Daedalus./

Xander blinked and stared at the comm display, "Th' hell? The Daedalus?" He flicked the comm transmit and said, "Say again, Control?"

/Rearm and report to the Daedalus./

Xander shook his head but complied. After a moment, he noticed where the experimental pinpoint barriers were focusing, and a realization struck him...

"...damn," he muttered. "That's actually crazy enough to work."

/Kindly keep your comments to yourself, Corporal Harris/ came Hayes's sharp voice.

Xander started and blushed, "Err, sorry, Commander." With that, he shut off his comm transmitter.

* * *

"Hey, squirt, how'd you do?" Xander asked, tousling Dawn's hair. 

"Stop it!" she smacked his arm. "For your information, Corporal, I took down three battlepods."

"Better'n me," Xander grinned. "I only tagged two. Unless you wanna count the cruiser."

"You were in the Daedalus?" she blinked, surprise overriding her irritation at the nickname.

"Yup," he nodded. "C'mon, let's go find the gang and celebrate our still being alive."

* * *

"Celebrating," it turned out, translated closer to "suffering in silence" this time as Buffy started mothering the two and checking them for injuries like a pair of ten-year-olds. 

"Will you cut it out, sis!"

Well, mostly in silence, anyway.

"Buffy," Xander said patiently, "the doctors cleared us. We're fine."

The Slayer's shoulders slumped, and she said, "I know, but... I worry about you two."

"Buff, you shouldn't worry about us," Xander said.

"Yeah, sis," Dawn piped up. "After all, we're here, we're alive, we're not hurt. It's when we're out there that we could get blown up or spaced or..." she trailed off at Xander's glare, "...I'm not helping, am I?"

Buffy twitched.

"C'mon," Willow said cheerfully, "we're here to celebrate. You guys got through your first combat mission okay, and statistically, that's when most pilots die."

Buffy twitched again.

"Uh, Willow?" Dawn said.

"Will?" Xander chimed in.

"What?" she asked, looking at them.

"Not helping," they said in tandem.

It was at this point that Giles returned, fully loaded. "Ah, I hope no one minds Chinese, but the White Dragon was open, and a loose girder fell on the pizza parlor."

He blinked at the twitching Buffy, the patience-worn Xander, the guilty-looking Dawn, and the blushing Willow.

And decided he really didn't want to know.

"Did you get any of those little spring rolls, Giles?" Willow asked.

"Um, no, Willow," he said, tucking a smaller bag behind his back, "I didn't."

* * *

That night, Xander dreamed. 

About then.

--Flashback--

A small part of Xander's mind made a mental note that wrinkly-looking demons in robes were to be avoided.

The rest of him was more focused on avoiding the flaming wreckage falling from the sky. It was a bit more of an immediate concern than the wrinkly robed demons, but he was definitely going to keep an eye out for them.

CRASH!

Xander narrowly dove out of the way as a thirty-foot-tall humanoid robot crashed into the ground and dug a great furrow in the ground, and darkness claimed him.

--End Flashback--

Xander bolted upright. He hadn't dreamed about that time in years. It had been his first exposure to robotech warfare, and he'd been lucky to survive it, even if the battle had taken place a hundred feet from him.

A hundred feet from him straight up, that is.

Of course, now he knew that the wrinkly robed demon that had sent him there was rwasundi demon, known for temporal anomalies. The Troika -- may they rot in hell for all eternity... including Andrew -- had used one to try to pin Katrina's death on Buffy, way back when.

_Reiya..._ the name drifted into his mind as he climbed out of be before he brutally shoved the memory aside and made his way to the head.

He had things to do.

But in the back of his mind, a face still lurked, a face with ice blue hair, blood red eyes, and alabaster skin.

* * *

Buffy was on the observation deck, leaning against the railing and watching the planes take off. 

"Watching Dawnie take off with the CAP?"

She started and turned, "Uh, yeah, Xander. Um, 'cap'?"

The destroid pilot leaned against the railing next to her and nodded at the launching veritechs, "Combat Aerospace Patrol. It's so we don't get caught by surprise if they attack."

"Oh."

They stood there in silence for several minutes.

"So, what's wrong, Buffy?"

She started again and relented with a sigh, "I dunno. I guess... I guess now I know how mom felt when she found out about the whole Slayer thing."

"Whaddaya mean?"

Buffy turned and leaned back against the railing, casting her gaze across the observation deck, and said, "Dawn. You. I mean, you're going out there, and I... I can't help. I don't know the first thing about this kind of fight."

"Don't be so sure about that, Buff," Xander replied, turning and matching her position. "There isn't that much difference between what we do out there and what we did back home. It's still a holding action, trying to make sure as few of us die as possible."

"How did she do it?" Buffy asked, shaking her head. She nodded toward across observation deck, "How do they do it? How do they keep going when their loved ones are out there, and they can't do anything to help?"

Folding his arms, he said, "Well, I'd imagine they just take each day as it comes." He turned again to face outward and nodded out, "Besides, Buffy, look again."

She did and saw a trio of fighters flying by.

"We're not alone this time."

* * *

Third Lieutenant Dawn Summers -- her commission granted by virtue of her engineering degree -- rotated her Valkyrie as she reached the outer edge of her patrol zone and fired her thrusters, killing her momentum and sending her on a vector skirting the patrol zone's edge. 

Her wingman -- a jovial man named Kyle Stewart who, for obvious reasons, went by the callsign "Green Lantern" -- banked his fighter in a much smoother -- if inefficient -- curve that sent it arcing along the border of their patrol zone. His flight path betrayed his previous experience flying in atmosphere.

She clicked on her comm system, "Skull Thirteen to Fourteen. You see anything?"

/Not a thing, Snow White. Place is emptier than my stomach./

Dawn merely nodded, glad that the Valkyrie's communication system included miniature portrait video feeds. It was spooky out here. Except for the muffled thrum of her fighter's engines several meters behind her and the faint whoosh of her cockpit's air circulation system, it was utterly silent.

Not that she wanted to hear anything out here. While outer space provided the ultimate soundproofing, the Valkyrie's sensors were tied into an array of hidden speakers surrounding the cockpit, and they would simulate the sounds she would hear if she were flying in atmosphere, allowing her to keep track of a pitched battle around her without having to keep looking at her sensor board.

With a quick tap to her yoke, she rolled her fighter around until its belly faced the SDF-1 and looked "up."

"It's beautiful out here," she murmured.

/No kidding on that, Snow White./

Her gaze swept in an arc around... and she hit her comm, "Heads up. Six ostriches incoming."

/Tally-ho/ Kyle replied as he pulled "up" toward them.

Even as she shifted to guardian mode and swung her veritech around, Dawn keyed her comm over to Flight Control's frequency and reported, "Skull Thirteen to Control. We've got six battlepods incoming and are moving to engage. Request assistance."

/Copy that, Skull Thirteen. Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four are en route. ETA, one minute./

_That's gonna be a long minute,_ she thought grimly as the missile targeting bracket on her HUD jittered uncertainly around the lead battlepod as they closed at a frightening speed.

/Skull Fourteen, guns guns guns./

A stream of 55mm shells sprayed out from Dawn's port side toward the incoming battlepods, severing one of the lead battlepod's legs at the knee. It was too low.

Or so she had thought. The third battlepod exploded, a line of holes stitched across the lower half of its ovoid torso.

"Nice shooting, Lantern," she said with a grin. "Skull Thirteen, fox two," she announced as a Stiletto streaked out from her left outermost hardpoint and struck the first battlepod square in the sensor eye.

_Now we're only outnumbered two to one,_ she thought as she kicked in her thrusters and converted to battloid mode, charging through the debris of the first battlepod.

Shifting to battloid, she twirled and fired her gun pod at the nearest battlepod as she flew past it, perforating the entry hatch.

An alarm blared, and she glanced down. Her eyes widened, and she yelled frantically over the comm, "Buddy spike! Buddy spike! Lantern, you've locked onto me!"

/Negative, negative! I'm on guns/

"Then who...?" she broke off as she fired her thrusters at full blast, hoping to break the lock. An explosion set off alarms all around her and sent her battloid somersaulting as she struggled to bring it back under control.

_Starboard engine's gone. Port engine's locked on full thrust. I'm a sitting duck out here!_

* * *

Author's Postscript: 

And yes, the Robotech Defense Force DOES have a "third lieutenant" rank. It is specifically mentioned by on-screen Max Sterling in one episode.

OTOH, there's no evidence of callsigns or the brevity coded comm chatter, but it just seemed wrong to me to have pilots without callsigns, and I like the flavor the comm chatter provides.

The whole "sensor-sound" system is a nod to both reality and the presence of sounds in space in _Robotech_.


	4. Chapter Three

Title: Armageddon Now (3) 

Author: Cyclone

Feedback: Please be gentle.

Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.

Rating: Mechanized violence and harsh language.

Spoilers: Up to Chosen for BtVS. Anything goes for the other.

Disclaimer: Some of the characters depicted herein belong to Joss. The jury's still out on others. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

Summary: The Scooby Gang must endure an apocalypse they cannot stop.

Author's Note: Much thanks to David Wangen, Yorath, and Anime Ronin for their input not only in this part, but in previous parts as well.

* * *

Dawn tried to shake her head clear as the world continued to spin. 

Literally.

With her starboard main thruster shot and her port main thruster at full, her battloid was stuck in a cartwheeling spin. Swallowing back the bile that threatened to rise in her throat, she levered herself away from the left-hand side of the cockpit -- where the centrifugal force was pushing her -- and wrenched an overhead panel open, slamming the heel of her hand on the button within. It was a manual cutoff switch that killed the reaction mass feed to the main thrusters.

The port engine died, and she continued to spin.

Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the control stick and fired her verniers to kill the spin and rotated her battloid around back to face the SDF-1. She saw Lantern's distinctive green Valkyrie in guardian mode, flitting around a pair of battlepods, neither side able to get a clean shot. She noted some Valkyrie debris among the wreckage and saw another veritech -- this one white with red trim -- facing off against an officer's pod.

Her lips curled into a snarl as she glared at the officer's pod. _So, you're the one who tagged me, huh?_

A quick glance at her sensor screen told her that the surviving new arrival was Skull 23. She soured as she remembered just who Skull 23 was: A hotshot amateur flying champion who'd mistakenly flown a VT trainer into combat back before the fold. He could fly -- no question; he was one of the hottest hands in her training class -- but he had about as much killer instinct as the average vamp fodder back home.

Sergeant Rick Hunter, callsign Joyrider.

She considered her options. She was at stand-off range, which ruled out guns, and without her main thrusters, she wasn't going anywhere fast. In battloid mode, missiles were difficult to use at best, and she dared not risk reconfiguring with the damage she'd taken.

Swallowing the distaste, Dawn clicked on her comm, "Joyrider, Snow White. Guns up. I'm gonna make your dance partner bounce."

There was a pause, "R-roger that, Snow White."

Resisting the urge to growl at him, Dawn brought up her targeting computer and bracketed the officer's pod. As soon as she heard the pure tone of a solid lock, the officer's pod vectored.

Straight into Hunter's targeting reticle, as the ensuing burst of shells indicated.

That left two fully-functional Valkyries against two battlepods.

It was over in a matter of moments.

* * *

"All right, all right. I'm coming!" Xander yelled at the insistent pounding on his door. 

"C'mon!" Dawn snapped, throwing a helmet at him.

"Huh?" Xander replied eloquently as as he caught the flight helmet.

"I need a wingman to fly sim with me."

"Hang on. Shouldn't you be resting? You just got back from flying CAP." He frowned, "What happened?"

She growled, "We ran into some pods. I dove right into the thick of it and got buddy spiked. Don't you dare let Buffy know."

"What?" he stared. "You think I'm crazy? She'd kill me. Who buddy spiked you anyway?"

"That high-flying idiot, Hunter."

Xander swallowed a laugh that quickly turned to smoldering anger. The "great Admiral Rick Hunter" nearly shot down his little -- okay, maybe not so little anymore -- Dawnie.

"Hold it," she scowled.

"What?"

"Revenge later, sims now."

* * *

"Xander, check your six!" 

"I know, Dawnie, I know," Xander said coolly as he shifted into battloid and instantly reversed direction. The GU-11 gun pod in his battloid's hand arced "down" as he passed the battlepod, bisecting the Zentraedi mecha.

He spun the battloid to face a pair of battlepods and shifted into guardian mode. He heard the missile lock tone and fired a split-second later. Three Stilettos shot out from his right wing, and he shifted to jet and followed them in, his flight path slightly under the missiles' flight paths.

He fired his gun pod, spraying an unaimed burst below the battlepods, then pulled hard on the yoke, bouncing up over the missile flight path... and cracking one of the two battlepods with another GU-11 burst as it tried to avoid both the missiles and shied away from his previous burst.

The other of the pair ate two of his Stilettos.

Xander rolled and dove, heading straight for another pair of battlepods -- the last two in the immediate area -- which were harassing Dawn's Valkyrie. Nosing his fighter to the closer one, he shifted into battloid and grabbed its chicken-walker legs. He then swung up his own legs and fired his main thrusters on full, melting delicate sensory equipment.

Still clinging to the battlepod, he inverted them both and used it as a shield just as the other battlepod fired. Xander lowered his head laser and returned fire.

"Simulation ended. Mission accomplished."

With a hiss, the cockpit of the Valkyrie simulator cracked open, and he clambered out.

"Um, Dawn?" he asked quietly. "Why is everyone staring at me?"

Before she could answer, a tall lanky man with a deep tan and blond hair walked up, "That was some pretty impressive flying in there. I'm Roy Fokker."

_Shit!_ Xander thought. _What the hell's the CAG want with me?_ Swallowing hard, he said, "Corporal Xander Harris, sir."

"What squad are you with?"

"Uh, Goliath Squadron, sir."

Roy frowned, "I thought that was a Tomahawk squad."

"It is, sir."

The CAG studied him for a long, nerve-wracking moment, then looked over at Dawn and said, "Well, Corporal, Lieutenant, care for a drink?"

"Sir?" Xander blinked in bewilderment but went along with it. He and Dawn flanked the CAG as they left the simulator room.

"Call me Roy. It's not every day I find a ground pounder that can make ace in one run, even in a sim," Roy said amicably. "You deflated an awful lot of egos just now." He glanced over at Dawn, "Speaking of which, congratulations, Lieutenant. Final review says that third battlepod was yours. You're now officially an ace."

Dawn let out an ear-piercing squeal of delight.

"Awk," Xander awked at the crushing Slayer-like hug she gave him.

Composing herself, she turned and saluted, "Thank you, sir."

Roy blinked at the sudden shift in gears, then gave her a lady-killer smile, "Hey, you earned it. Bonus points for what you did to help Rick take out that command pod."

She shrugged. "I had to do something, sir."

Xander halted at the door when he realized where they were leading him. It was an privately-owned bar just off the RDF compound. Looking up at the sign, he blurted out, "I can't go in there!"

"You can today," Roy grinned.

"C'mon, Xander," Dawn tugged on his arm.

With a resigned sigh and Taps playing in his mind, Xander marched into The Cat.

He could feel every set of eyes on him -- a few hostile, mostly curious -- as he followed Dawn and the CAG into The Cat. Despite the name, there wasn't a single feline decoration in the room. Rather, F-14 Tomcats, A/V-8 Harriers, F-203 Dragon IIs, and VF-1 Valkyries dominated the interior. The "Cat" in the name was short for "catapult."

It was a fighter jockey's haven, and a destroid driver like Xander stuck out like a sore thumb, even without his tags.

With a great deal of trepidation, he followed Roy and Dawn to a corner booth, and after a long moment in which Xander didn't touch his drink, Roy broke the silence, "So, Xander, is it? Where'd you learn to fly like that?"

"You ever watch 'The Last Starfighter'?"

"Cute, Corporal," Roy said. "How about the real answer?"

Dawn snorted, "Knowing Xander, that is the real answer."

"Be nice, Dawn Patrol, or I start telling embarassing stories from your childhood," was Xander's response.

"You. Woudn't. Dare." The words were spoken with a glacial tone that no sane man would ignore.

Xander, being who he was, did so cheerfully: "Of course I would. Especially since your mom was so kind as to share the really good ones with me."

Dawn paled, "She didn't..."

Xander grinned, "Oh, yes." He leaned back, "But as it happens, it is the truth. When I wasn't patrolling for, ah, our local neighborhood watch, I was playing video games. Plus, there was that pilot I met during my road trip."

Roy looked between the two and shook his head in amusement. These two were going to be almost as entertaining as Rick and Lisa.

"How'd you like to fly?"

Xander blinked.

"What?"

* * *

Author's Postscript: 

New poll: What callsign should the other pilots stick Xander with?

Fury (as in Nick Fury), Snoopy, White Knight, or Wotan (an alternate name for Odin)?


	5. Chapter Four

Title: Armageddon Now (4) 

Author: Cyclone

Feedback: Please be gentle.

Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.

Rating: Mechanized violence and harsh language.

Spoilers: Up to Chosen for BtVS. Anything goes for the other.

Disclaimer: Some of the characters depicted herein belong to Joss. The jury's still out on others. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

Summary: The Scooby Gang must endure an apocalypse they cannot stop.

Author's Note: Much thanks to David Wangen, Yorath, and Anime Ronin for their input not only in this part, but in previous parts as well.

* * *

"Plus, there was that pilot I met during my road trip." 

Xander had told the truth. He had met a pilot during his road trip. In fact, he had met several. But his first -- and most... educational -- experience flying had been without the benefit of a teacher.

--Flashback--

Xander picked his way through the rubble. It was his fifth day in this crazy world, and it was starting to look like he should consider making plans for a more permanent stay.

He glanced over his shoulder to make sure his companion wasn't having any trouble, but the albino pilot was fine. She was the pilot of the giant robot that had nearly crashed on him, and the concussion she'd suffered in the crash had him worried. It was three days before she'd woken up, and aside from her name -- Reiya -- she had hardly said a word since then.

He turned back to his own progress and felt her blood red eyes drilling into his back as he pressed onward.

And stopped.

"Whoa."

It was definitely some kind of spacecraft; that much was obvious. It looked like a giant metallic bird with a large barrel under each wing, and it couldn't be terribly aerodynamic. The left pod was completely wrecked, but the right seemed mostly intact, though the front panel seemed to have been wrenched askew.

Xander glanced over his shoulder back at Reiya, "Wait here, okay?"

She met his gaze for a long moment, then nodded. He ducked into the ship's right pod and looked around, momentarily wishing he had a flashlight.

WHAM!

Stumbling back from whatever he'd walked into, Xander scowled and rubbed his forehead. Reaching out a hand, he cautiously felt his way around until he found a small panel that opened up. Feeling inside, he felt a button, and with a shrug, he pushed it.

He heard something mechanical move nearby, and he headed in that general direction until he found a chair.

"Huh," he muttered. After a long moment, he shrugged again and sat down. His hand brushed against something, and panic struck him for a moment as the chair shot upward.

He blinked and looked around. It was some sort of cockpit. Ooh! Was that a manual?

--End Flashback--

He'd done a fair bit of damage to the surrounding area with the Beta fighter he'd found, but he was damn glad he had found it.

Xander suddenly realized the CAG had said something while he was lost in his memories, and now the two of them were looking at him expectantly.

"What?"

"Yeah, I know," the CAG said. "Hard to believe the offer's real, but you've got talent, Corporal." He leaned across the table, "Personally, I think you're wasted driving those walking targets."

_He wants me to fly? With one eye?_ Xander thought incredulously. He shook his head and tapped his patch, "Think you might be forgetting something, sir."

"Not that long ago, you'd be right, Corporal," Fokker replied, "but things are different now. Instrumentation's better, and the fact is, one eye or two, I've never seen anyone blow through a sim like that without veritech training, and we're not exactly overflowing with pilots these days."

Xander looked at Dawn to see what she thought. Her eyes were sparkling, and she was smiling at him with a hopeful look that was downright frightening. He wasn't sure why, but he could almost see cherry blossoms floating around her.

Clearly, she was in favor of this.

"It'd be a lateral transfer," Roy said. "I'd put you through an accelerated program. If you can cut it, you fly with us. If not, you go back to driving Tomahawks."

Xander leaned back thoughtfully.

"Think about it," Roy said, rising to his feet. He paused and looked back, "Oh, and one more thing: We get better billets." He winked and started out again, "C'mon, Lieutenant, we've got to see about getting you a new fighter."

"Yes, sir," Dawn nodded and followed.

Xander watched them leave as he considered the offer.

A moment later, Xander realized something.

Something very, very important.

He was a ground pounder. Alone. In The Cat.

This could get ugly.

* * *

Lt. Donald Spencer, RDFN, looked to his left. Standing there at attention was one Destroid Corps Corporal Alexander Harris, Tomahawk pilot, Goliath Squadron. He looked like the final reel of a Rocky movie. 

He looked to his right. Sprawling, staggering, and swaying there were twenty veritech pilots, including six who were unconscious and held up by their fellow pilots. None of them looked any better than Harris.

He looked back at the corporal and raised a questioning eyebrow.

The corporal shrugged, "I'm a marine, sir. Ooh-rah."

Lt. Spencer knew the marines prided themselves on being tough fighters, but this was ridiculous. Why did this have to happen when he was duty officer? The Destroid Corps was never going to let anyone forget this.

Xander, meanwhile, took the opportunity to give one of the battered pilots a nasty glare.

Sgt. Rick Hunter flinched.

_Well,_ thought Xander, _at least it wasn't a total waste._ He knew he was going to be in for it for not giving Dawn the first crack at him, but once the fight broke out, he saw the shot and just had to take it.

Now, if only he could figure out how he was going to explain to the Gunny what he was doing in The Cat...

* * *

Xander resisted the urge to flinch as Gunnery Sergeant Adam Church, his immediate superior, bawled him out for the bar fight. 

And he'd thought Darth Willow was scary.

"About the only consolation is that you were still standing at the end of that mess, unlike some of those Navy and Spacy pukes! I suppose that counts for something. Somewhere." With a shake of his head and a disgusted sigh, the gunny turned and left, muttering too low for Xander to pick up what he was saying.

Shaking it off, Xander headed for the NCO lounge.

He never did finish that drink of his at The Cat.

* * *

It was surprisingly late before he finally returned to the townhouse he shared with Giles and the girls. He'd taken a detour to the observation deck and started watching the Prometheus's flight deck as a training squad practiced cat launches and carrier landings. 

Although the catapult was hardly needed in outer space -- the SDF-1's internal fighter bays attested to that -- the catapult had the advantage of giving the launching fighters a velocity boost that conserved their supply of precious reaction mass, extending their effective mission flight and dogfighting time.

It was why the CAG -- even though he was Spacy, and Prommie was definitely a Navy ship -- had brought his Skulls on over and stationed them on Prommie.

In addition, trying to transport a veritech between Prommie's hangar bay and the SDF-1's internal bays was a messy business that crossed a quarter of Macross City and gummed up traffic; landing right back on the Prometheus was more expedient for those stationed there.

While the Prometheus wasn't originally designed for space, its submersible construction made it possible to refit it for space use, and it now occupied one of the docking arms intended for the ARMD missile ships, while the Daedalus his Tomahawk was parked in was atteched to the other.

The Prometheus effectively increased the SDF-1's fighter capacity by half, which was another reason carrier landings were necessary. With the influx of pilots and the ship's internal manufacturing facilities, the fighter bays were kept as close to full as possible. There just wasn't room in the SDF-1's internal bays for all the veritechs.

He knew only a little less than half of the pilots he was watching would actually regularly use the skills they were working on. Because of the initial velocity boost Prommie's catapult provided, those launching from Prommie tended to be the first into combat besides the CAP, and therefore, they took disproportionately heavy casualties as compared to those assigned to the SDF-1's internal bays. The new pilots would be assigned to fill in the gaps in the squadrons -- instead of pulling more experienced pilots from other squads for the job -- in order to preserve unit cohesion as much as possible.

"Hello, Corporal."

Xander was startled out of his reverie by the unexpected voice and turned. He stood at attention and saluted, "Commander."

"As you were, Corporal," Lisa Hayes said, an amused look on her face. "I'm off-duty." He must have been staring, for her next words were, "Contrary to popular belief, Corporal, I don't, in fact, live on the bridge."

"Err, of course not, ma'am," he stuttered. _Damn it, why the hell are all the senior officers popping up and wanting to chat with me?_

"I heard about your performance in the simulators."

"You did?" he blinked in surprise.

She nodded, "From Commander Fokker. He was very impressed." Actually, she had heard it from Claudia who, in turn, had heard it from Roy. According to Claudia, Roy was impressed enough to regret that no one had found him years ago, back during the Global War. _And if he had been any less talented, I would have signed his death warrant,_ she thought soberly.

"Oh," was all Xander could think of to say.

They stood there in companionable silence for a long moment.

"Well, I'm going for a walk, Xander," Lisa said, finally breaking the silence. "Care to join me?"

Xander blinked at that and ran through a series of possible responses and probable -- based on his experience -- consequences until he finally settled on: "Nah. I'd better get back. It's getting pretty late."

"All right," she said, turning and walking toward one of the obs deck exits.

Shaking his head, Xander began the trek home.

* * *

By the time he'd gotten back, Xander had figured out how Lt. Cmdr. Hayes had known to call him Xander -- he'd told her back when they'd first met face to face after his first inadvertant combat outing -- but he was still trying to figure out what he would do when Giles and the girls saw his battered condition. 

As he opened the door, grim faces greeted him, dissolving into worry and concern as Willow and Buffy began fussing at him. Xander looked at the weaponry strewn about.

"Okayyy..." Xander said, "what's with all the hardware?"

Giles finished cleaning his glasses and said, "There's a vampire on the ship."

* * *

Author's Postscript: 

Well, thanks to everyone who responded to the poll, but I've decided to go with one that wasn't among the initial choices.

Oh, and if anyone has any suggestions as to what the other Scoobs (particularly Giles) could do while most of the action's happening in mecha, I'd really appreciate it.


	6. Chapter Five

Title: Armageddon Now (5?) 

Author: Cyclone

Feedback: Please be gentle.

Distribution: Gimme credit and a link.

Rating: Mechanized violence and harsh language.

Spoilers: Up to Chosen for BtVS. Anything goes for the other.

Disclaimer: Some of the characters depicted herein belong to Joss. The jury's still out on others. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

Summary: The Scooby Gang must endure an apocalypse they cannot stop.

Author's Note: Much thanks to David Wangen, Yorath, and Anime Ronin for their input not only in this part, but in previous parts as well.

* * *

The admiral waited on the tarmac of the landing strip that dominated the visible portion of Alaska Base. He shivered as the wind chilled him to the bone, slashing through his thick and heavy coat as though it weren't there. He watched the VC-27 Tunny military transport plane as it set up for its landing approach. As an admiral, he was hardly obligated to stand out here in the cold to greet every transport that flew in, but this was a special case.

After all, his daughter was on board.

With the alien fleet long-range sensors had detected and the debacle with the SDF-1, he knew he had to get her to safety, and there was no place on Earth that was as well-protected as Alaska Base. He had had to pull a few strings to get her here, but as a member of the United Earth Defense Council, he had the strings to pull. That her particular experience made her expertise valuable if something unexpected happened only made it easier.

They hadn't always seen eye to eye on things, but she was still his daughter.

Several minutes passed, and he tilted his head in silent greeting as his daughter exited the plane and climbed down to the tarmac.

She threw a sharp salute and spoke, her voice as cold and cutting as the arctic wind, "Colonel Samantha Finn, reporting as ordered, sir."

He was forced to remind himself that he was lucky. At least he knew his daughter was safe, even if she did hate him. Don Hayes was not so fortunate: His daughter, Lisa, had been assigned to the SDF-1 when it and Macross Island had disappeared.

* * *

As Xander ran through the park, he saw Lt. Cmdr. Lisa Hayes and a large man wearing a ski mask. He pushed himself to run faster, but just as he reached the edge of the clearing, he skidded to a halt.

Lisa grabbed her assailant's arms and brought her knee up into his gut, then shifted and knife-handed the back of his neck.

The word "timber" silently echoed through Xander's mind.

Let it never be said that the RDF Spacy's hand to hand training was lax.

Xander watched the fallen attacker warily, but he didn't get up. _Definitely not a vampire,_ he concluded.

"Basic wasn't that long ago for me, Corporal."

Xander jerked and found himself looking in her eyes. "Hey! That's not why I..." he suddenly frowned. "Why do you do that, anyway?"

She blinked. "Do what?"

"Act like you're some old spinster," he snorted. "I'll have you know, I'm a good five years older than you, young lady, so quit with the old and over-the-hill act, ya hear?"

"I do not act like an old spinster!"

"Then what do you call assuming everyone else thinks you're old, huh?" he shot back. "Like that crap about Basic?"

"It's not 'crap', Corporal. It's the truth."

He shrugged, "So you're a hardass. Big deal. Considering you're supposed to keep the fighter jocks in line, you've gotta be." He looked in her eyes, "They talk about you like that because they respect you, and trust me, getting the respect of that bunch of lunatics isn't easy." He looked away, "You have it. Old man Gloval has it. The CAG, by natural law, has it. The fighter techs have it. And that's about the sum total number of people on this ship who do."

"But..." she said uncertainly, "...Rick... I-I mean Sergeant Hunter..."

"Is an exception," Xander interrupted curtly. She did not need to hear his diatribe about the flaws of someone whose pure and utter lack of combat instinct put one of his girls in danger because he was overly anxious to assist and didn't have the gut instinct to warn him to hold fire.

"You're just saying that because he almost shot down Lieutenant Summers earlier," she smirked.

Xander blinked. Could she read his mind? "Uhh... okay. I'll admit, that may bias my opinion, but that's not all, Commander. He's a good pilot, great potential, but he's got no head for combat. At least not yet."

She raised an eyebrow, "You've met him?"

Xander coughed, "Well, if by 'met' you mean 'beat the crap out of'..."

"Ah, yes," she smiled, "the infamous 'pirate brawl.'"

Xander gave her a pained look, "Please, if I mean anything to you at all, never ever call it that again."

"And what exactly do you think you mean to me, Corporal?"

Xander's head jerked up, "Uh, I didn't mean... that is, I... uhh... you're really enjoying this, aren't you, Commander?"

"Call me Lisa, please," she said, the amused twinkle not leaving her eyes.

Xander gave a long-suffering -- and melodramatically exaggerated -- sigh, "Women."

Lisa's face and voice turned sharp, "And what's that supposed to mean, Corporal?"

"Hey, if I'm gonna call you Lisa, I insist you call me Xander," he said pointedly. "As for what that means... let's just say I've spent my entire life inadvertantly entertaining women at my own expense." He smiled, "C'mon, we should get going. It's late."

"Are you offering to walk me home, Xander?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged, "What do you think I was doing back in the park here?"

"Oh, how gallant of you, brave hero," she replied melodramatically. "Then let us be off, sir knight."

Xander gave another long-suffering sigh.

* * *

Xander stifled a yawn as he made his way back home. He just wanted to get to his bed and grab some rack time.

He was going to be disappointed.

His key had barely started to turn when the door was flung open from inside.

Finding himself marched to the couch, Xander wondered just what the hell was going on. Before he could voice his confusion, Willow sat him down and sat next to him, "So, is she cute?"

"Who?" he blinked.

"Whoever you just ran off to save," she explained patiently. "Cute? And does she have a sister?"

"Huh?" he sputtered. "Why does there have to be a 'she'?"

"Oh, come on, Xander," Buffy threw in. "In all the time I've known you, you've never had a guy friend that wasn't dating one of us."

Xander looked away, "Not entirely true, Buff."

At that solemn reminder, silence reigned, and Xander rose...

"Well, I'm beat. G'night."

...and made good his escape.

"Hey!"

* * *

"Exactly what the hell are you trying to pull, Fokker!"

Lt. Cmdr. Roy Fokker looked up as the Destroid Corps officer stormed into his office.

"That kid's going to be an officer as soon as his gunny and I can convince him to step up, and you want to pull him out to become a FLYBOY? Over my dead body!" roared Lt. Col. Edmund Talbot.

"Colonel Maistroff has already agreed to the transfer, Ed," Roy replied evenly. "It's a done deal."

"The hell it is! I don't give a rat's ass what that paper-pushing ticket-punching rat bastard has agreed to," Talbot leaned over Roy's desk, eyes blazing. "The Ninety-Sixth is MY regiment, and you're not pulling one of MY troops without a damned good reason! The farking civvies may think you veritech bastards all have halos and can cross the Atlantic without getting your feet wet, but you are not the damned tin gods they make you out to be!"

"No, I suppose we're not," Roy admitted solemnly. "But Harris has talent. Outnumbered, no training, and he splashed five 'pods in his first sim run. And let's face it, Colonel. We need the manpower. We've taken two dozen casualties over the last three engagements alone, and we don't have any source of trained replacements. We're throwing fresh recruits straight into the meat grinder, and they're getting chewed up. Someone with Harris's talent might just keep some of those pilots alive long enough to become veterans, and you know how much we need those vets if we're going to make it back to Earth."

Talbot was speechless for a long moment, before he sighed and relented, "All right, granted. You flyboys need all the help you can get. But what the hell was Harris doing in a VT sim?"

"Well, talk to Lieutenant Summers about that," Roy hedged.

"Oh, I will."

* * *

"I didn't think Xander -- sorry, I mean Corporal Harris -- would be able to do any of that," Dawn shrugged. "I wanted to get practice flying with someone who had no idea what he was doing, given that mess with Hunter."

"Hunter, huh?" Talbot mused. _Wasn't Roy talking about how good Hunter was?_ he thought to himself with a frown. _I'd better talk to Bill._

* * *

Xander was a little nervous. Okay, he was a decent enough pilot with a Beta fighter, and he had yet to have his mecha shot out from under him, which was more than could be said for a lot of Tomahawk pilots.

But still, this was his first day of flight school. It was bound to make anyone nervous. The fact that he had a good ten years on everyone else in the class didn't help matters much either.

Two officers in RDF Air Force uniforms entered the room. The first was a full-bird colonel with steel-grey hair and a hard look. Behind him was an attractive blonde major.

Stop checking out the instructor, Xander, he mentally scolded himself.

"Good morning, kiddies," the colonel said, "and welcome to flight training. I'm Colonel O'Neill, but you'll learn to know me as 'That Damned Bastard.'" He gestured to his companion, "This is Major Carter. We're the last two Air Force pilots on this ship -- since no one wants to sign up -- so we're stuck teaching you Navy and Spacy pukes to fly. Half of you will be in her class, half in mine."

He smiled, Xander felt a chill run down his back. Colonel O'Neill's gaze swept across the fifty or so flight trainees, finally locking onto Xander.

_Oh, shit,_ Xander thought. _This is bad._

"And it looks like you're in luck. Corporal Harris there is already a simulator ace."

_I was right._

There was no mistaking the evil grin on the colonel's face.

* * *

Author's Postscript:

You wouldn't believe how long that final scene took to write. I think I got to the beginning of that scene a couple of TNC episodes ago...


End file.
